The Body in Bodega Bay: A Nora Barnes and Toby Sandler Mystery

Chapter 6

77 6 NOT A THING WAS TAKEN, not a blessed thing. Drawers and closets had been tossed, but the upset was just a quick turnover of the contents, in search of something that hadn’t been found. The woman officer Dan sent over was especially impressed that a thick envelope of twenty-dollar bills and my jewelry box with some gold items in it were touched only enough to check for the absence of something else. The intruder had not lingered a second over things a normal thief would pocket. After documenting the break-in with photos and notes, Officer Carla Moore and her sidekick Sue joined us in cleaning up the mess. I believe it was sheer neighborliness, but Carla insisted that she often got an insight during the process of putting a room back together. Not this time. But it sure made getting up the next morning a less daunting prospect. We each had a different reason for getting up early. Angie wanted to work on a writing exercise for her angel reader. Toby was busy trying to estimate the worth of the items Charlie had brought into the shop. And 78 my mind was on the dinner party we were committed to having that night, in spite of all our troubles. Dan and his wife, Colleen, were members of our Gourmet Club, so I knew I’d be seeing him that evening and that we’d talk about the case. For now, I tried to push aside thoughts of the break-in and to concentrate on getting ready for our company. I needed to double-check my grocery list and get into town. So, I made coffee, put out cereal muffins and yogurt, and tried to take solace in the fact that my family was together, each of us quietly having breakfast and doing our own thing. I left before Toby and Angie did, getting a promise to see her after lunch and him before dinner. I missed Angie as I performed the necessary errands. I had been looking forward to showing off the funky little shops where I was greeted by name and given the best pickings, whether for stone-baked sourdough at the Freestone Bakery, or for sweet-cream butter at Mary’s Dairy, or for fresh duck at Willy’s poultry farm. Everyone at the shops asked after Toby. Since Toby is the real cook in the family, he’s the one who has forged relationships with local food producers. Toby started the Gourmet Club, and he usually takes charge of our contribution. This time, though, he suggested that my term off from teaching would be a good time for me to take the lead. So we had created the menu together, and I had committed to doing the cooking that could be done before the guests arrived. He’d do the rest. You could say I’m a middling cook, and that would be generous. One thing that keeps me in the middle is my time limit. I say it should never take longer to prepare a meal than to eat it. With really good friends, I’m content to eat and drink and talk for three hours, but not more. So that’s my limit on food prep and cooking: three hours. Lucky for me, Sonoma County caters to lazy gourmands as well as gourmet cooks, so I can pick up pre-made duck stock and any kind of crust and pretend it’s my own. When I’m chef de cuisine, you get the speedy version. My last stop was at Whole Foods in Sebastopol, where nobody knows me but where they always have what I need. As I was pushing my shopping cart out the door, I suddenly froze. A man in the parking lot 79 was staring at me intently. He was standing next to an expensive-looking car and casually resting one arm on the roof. He was tall enough to do that easily. In his other hand he held a cell phone pressed against his ear. I’m not that glamorous that strangers stop and stare at me in the street, and besides, a woman can tell the difference between casual male interest and something else. This was something else, though I wasn’t sure what. The guy wore jeans, had shaggy, movie star–length hair, and sported a stubble beard. That was a style...